bolson
bolson
@bolson.org
computer wizard. acrobat. better democracy through computer science.
3.1K followers107 following1.2K posts
I listened to a favorite interviewer (Krista Tippett, "On Being") have an hour ramble about Consciousness including some "interview" with Claude the LLM-bot. I was disappointed, then got philosophical... onbeing.org/programs/mic...
I listened to a favorite interviewer (Krista Tippett, "On Being") have an hour ramble about Consciousness including some "interview" with Claude the LLM-bot. I was disappointed, then got philosophical... onbeing.org/programs/mic...
Massachusetts is proposing open-primary top-two-runoff. vote NO because it's such a stupid suboptimal change that's mostly a step sideways. MA like CA will _sometimes_ get a more interesting D vs D general election. The right answer would be RCV with ballot access reform www.wbur.org/news/2026/10...
But Mass rejected RCV in 2020! Yup. For a variety of stupid reasons. Major fumble by local RCV advocates. Probably doesn't help that they're a branch of the national org constantly lying trying to prop up RCV www.wgbh.org/news/politic...
Burner art project: copy of Brussels' "Manneken Pis" but with an ignited stream of liquid fuel coming out. Title "It burns when I pee" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manneke...
this art made my day better
When Grammy-winning musician Rhiannon Giddens begins playing “Old Corn Liquor,” a traditional Black American folk tune, acclaimed Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man recognizes similarities to Chinese pentatonic music and spontaneously joins in. The joy on their faces says it all.
This is a beautiful tribute to a bunch of "little" projects that are wildly successful and make our world go and make things better sheets.works/data-viz/hol...
bolson reposted
Replying to @newlevant.bsky.social
New study suggests that raising school ventilation levels to ASHRAE 241 targets could reduce flu cases by 33% for the WHOLE POPULATION! We need clean air in schools so bad!!! www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...
If you want the news delivered to you in the form of a comic with a cat announcer telling you the story, NPR has you covered
For my latest @npr.org story, I was turned into a 😺 (again) to explain how the #2030Census gives your state power Here's a census cat comic, by my fur-midable colleague Connie Hanzhang Jin and me-ow: www.npr.org/2026/10/01/n...
This is beautiful. 527,001 known asteroids; 35,165 satellites and probes. Best viewed on the biggest screen you have. space.bl2.net
Variation: some people have gotten lucky as if they flipped heads 30 times in a row, believed it skill, and are wholly unprepared for when their luck changes
I have a theory about how many of the world's problems are caused by people who were told they were the smartest people alive as kids, believed it, and then when they became adults and couldn't accept that maybe they weren't that special, started breaking shit if only to prove they were special
if beef didn't already exist and it was growing fast we'd all hate it. I am also rationalizing being in the tech industry and the tradeoffs that come with that; and I was also already a grumpy vegetarian
beef is negative food. you turn 1000 calories of feed into 100 calories of beef and a whole lot of methane and cow shit. ai does produce more food than the beef industry (zero)
just finished @adapalmer.bsky.social 's "Inventing the Renaissance" and it finishes with as resounding a pep-talk of optimism of humanity as I have heard anywhere. Beautiful stuff. Love it.
Amazing. I once bought a custom built suit that only worked if you stood around statuesque in it. (Indochino is garbage, avoid)
It's great to see tailoring accommodate such extreme movement today. This level of tailoring was a bit more common in the past, as you can see in old films featuring Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly, but many modern suits will lift off the wearer's neck even when they're just walking.
The best model of systemic racism in the US is "Caste" by Isabel Wilkerson en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste:_...
The best model I have of a person being racist comes from Hannah Arendt "Origins of Totalitarianism" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ori... She describes 'race consciousness' which I understand as viewing the world as a zero sum game between race-teams, my team wins and your team loses, etc
I feel like @smbccomics.bsky.social called this one www.smbc-comics.com/comic/case
OpenAI beat humans to solving the Navier-Stokes problem, but mathematicians say the AI's solution isn't telling them much. n.pr/4hlK2gv
@datadoghq.com your docs are bad and you should feel bad. The Python SDK has no notes on using the new personal access tokens. The best way I've found to design a new query is to use the web 'explore', then turn on browser debugging, reload, and watch what queries it does
I believe they will "cheat like hell", they will id-challenge people, they will throw away ballots, they will intimidate with armor and guns
After President Donald Trump told attendees at the Republican midterm convention Thursday night that "we want honesty in our elections," he led them in a pledge to "cheat like hell" and "go out and vote" in the midterm elections. https://to.pbs.org/4yTjfzl